


dreams in which you're dying

by komikamii



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, Dream AU, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Self-Harm, unedited, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:40:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/komikamii/pseuds/komikamii
Summary: Hinata always dreams about him. Hinata’s never seen the boy before, at least not when he’s awake.Until he does, and the dreams begin to change everything.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	dreams in which you're dying

**Author's Note:**

> in an unsurprising turn of events, i wrote another goddamn unedited komahina vent fic based off random poetry. wow. and this time, i finished at...6am (say goodbye to my sleep schedule lmao)  
> this one's based off of richard siken's i had a dream about you, so give that a read if you're into poetry!

Hinata always dreams about him. He’s a white-haired boy in a brown sweater, whose eyes are always a little dead and whose skin is always a little lifeless. Hinata’s never seen the boy before, at least not when he’s awake.

He dreams of drinking orange juice and sangria with the boy, of watching the ocean bend and break beneath the moon with him. He throws an orange at the boy and he catches it with a grin and takes a bite. Juice dribbles down his chin. He dreams they’re smiling, and they’re laughing, and they’re happy. He doesn’t quite know what that feels like.

In the morning he wakes up alone. Of course he’s alone. What was he expecting? That somehow a dream boy could become real? _Stupid_ , he berates himself, standing up and waiting for the world to stop spinning around him.

He drags his feet on the way to school, unwilling to let go of the dream world and the solace of his bedroom. The road smells of oil and smoke and the dreams that are shattered on the sides of it like the glass shards scattered in the gutters.

“Hey! You!”

The voice is strange. It’s not one Hinata recognises.

Someone taps him on the shoulder – a white-haired boy in a brown sweater, whose eyes are alive. Hinata’s sure he’s seen the boy before, but he doesn’t know where.

“You dropped this,” the boy says, handing him an orange. “It fell out of your bag.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Hinata blinks. He doesn’t remember putting an orange inside his bag.

The white-haired boy continues walking at Hinata’s side, his infectious smile still plastered on his face. “You look dazed,” he says. “What’s up?”

“Why would I tell you?” Hinata scoffs. “You’re just a stranger.” Hinata doesn’t want to tell him he’s been staying awake at night dreaming of a boy, a boy that so happens to look exactly like him.

The boy smiles. “It’s okay. I’m Nagito Komaeda, by the way.” He offers his hand for Hinata to shake.

“Hajime Hinata,” Hinata says. Komaeda’s hand his warm when he shakes it. His grip is firm. It’s warm too, so innately _alive_.

“That’s a nice name.” Komaeda smiles again.

He gazes at the river below them as they cross a bridge, and Hinata gazes at him. He really does look exactly like the boy in his dreams. Maybe a little more alive, maybe a little healthier-looking, but the same boy, somehow.

That night Hinata dreams he and the dream boy are smoking in a parking lot. The smoke is filling his lungs, making him cough and choke, but he’s okay, because there’s someone to cough and choke and gag with him. They’re laughing again, but the boy’s laughter seems sicker tonight.

Eventually, Hinata’s pack of cigarettes runs out. “I’ll go get more,” he mumbles, making his way to a nearby service station.

“Wait!” dream boy exclaims. “Don’t go in there, please.” He’s practically begging. His eyes are desperate. “Something…something bad is going to happen. Because you’re with me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hinata says gently, taking the boy’s hand and leading him inside. He can feel his palms start to sweat.

“I’m serious,” the boy nags, but he walks in anyway.

The doors part as they enter, and a cashier greets them. Hinata heads straight to the counter for his cigarettes, and dream boy follows. “See? We’re fine?” Hinata points out to him.

But the moment the words leave his mouth, the glass front windows shatter around him.

He wakes up.

He sits up in bed, his skin crawling with cold sweat. He runs a hand through his hair, resting his forehead on his wrist. He knows it’s only a dream, but it feels like he was really there watching it fall apart.

He strips off his shirt and searches for his uniform among the piles on his floor. It’s silent and lonely in his apartment as he mutters curses at his laundry. He hates living alone. He wishes he had a family to fill the silence.

Suddenly his phone buzzes. He looks at the lit-up screen, wondering just who it is contacting him this early in the morning.

_Nagito Komaeda: You wanna meet at the bridge again?_

“How the fuck did that guy get my ID…” Hinata mutters, but he replies a joyful “ _sure!!”_ anyway. “…Bet it was Chiaki,” he adds, finally fishing his white button up school shirt from under his bed.

He gets changed quickly and chugs a can of coffee from his fridge just before he leaves the house. He throws the empty can on his couch. It’s not like there’s anyone to yell at him about it, at least not anymore.

As he makes his way to the bridge, he stares at the message. “Why does that guy care so much?” he grumbles. He wants to believe that maybe this guy actually cares about him, but that’s stupid to think, isn’t it?

Somewhere in his mind he starts to suspect Komaeda is lying to him, that he’s not even going to be at the bridge, and that he’s just saying things to humiliate him. Thus it surprises him to see a familiar face when he arrives.

“Yo,” Komaeda says.

“Hi.” It’s awkward today. Why? What changed?

They walk in silence for a while. The emptiness hangs in the air, like it’s readying to crush them both. Hinata wishes he could make himself talk. He wishes he could just open his mouth and _say something_.

But his tongue is tied.

“Y’know, Hinata-kun…Ah! Can I call you Hinata-kun? Anyways, I had this really weird dream last night. You were in it, too…I can’t remember exactly what happened though…”

“The one where we go into the convenience store because I run out of cigarettes?” Hinata suggests.

Komaeda’s eyes light up. “Yes, that one! How’d you know?”

Hinata doesn’t answer. He can’t think of a way he can explain it.

“Speaking of which,” Komaeda says, “D’ya happen to have a smoke on you?”

“Oh, I don’t smoke–” Hinata tries to say, but the other boy has already pulled the pack out of his back pocket. “I don’t know where that came from,” he admits. “I genuinely don’t.”

Komaeda smiles as he takes one out and rolls it, handing Hinata his pack back. “You’re funny, Hinata-kun.” He places the cigarette between his teeth to light it. “You don’t have to hide things from me. It’s okay.”

 _I’m not hiding anything_ , Hinata wants to say, but once again, he can’t make himself talk.

Komaeda slips into an alleyway, leaning up against the brick wall and taking a drag. Hinata stands awkwardly in front of him. “You want some?” he asks, blowing smoke rings nonchalantly.

Tentatively, Hinata nods.

“Come here then,” Komaeda smirks, grabbing Hinata by the face as he steps closer, his thumbs caressing his cheeks and his lips. Smoke from his lips stings Hinata’s eyes and nose, but he likes it. He feels it filling his lungs and constraining his breath, but it’s a good suffocation.

Komaeda leans over him. He’s taller than Hinata thought he was. He takes a last drag and throws the butt on the ground, pressing his lips against Hinata’s, his smoke filled breath creeping into Hinata’s own lungs.

It’s suffocating, but it’s the kind of suffocating Hinata is willing to choke to death on.

He dreams about that moment killing him for days to come, and every time he wakes up as the world starts to go black. He wishes he could have seen the heavens.

Sleep stops coming to him so easily.

The next time he and Komaeda see each other it’s when Hinata falls asleep in class, the nights of insomnia and tossing and turning finally catching up to him. Komaeda pokes his nose softly.

“Oi,” he murmurs. “Class is over. Get up.”

Hinata cracks open his eyes a little, squinting through the light as his eyes adjust. “So…tired…” he groans.

Pulling over a nearby chair, Komaeda sits next to him. “You haven’t been sleeping well?” he asks, resting his head on the same desk as Hinata’s.

Yawning, Hinata shakes his head. “I keep having these…weird dreams.”

“Mm, you mentioned one the other day. I had the same one.”

“Yeah…” Hinata doesn’t want to admit he’s been dreaming of him many more times than that.

Komaeda stares wistfully into Hinata’s eyes. “I dream of you a lot, you know.” He sighs. “You died in the last one, a few nights ago. I haven’t slept well since.”

“You don’t say…” Hinata doesn’t want to admit the same has happened to him. He still wants to distance himself from this boy.

With delicate fingers Komaeda brushes a strand of hair out of Hinata’s face. “You don’t talk a lot, do you?” he says softly. “You’re that kind of guy, I suppose.”

Hinata smiles the barest of smiles.

In the sun, the white-haired boy sitting next to him seems to glow almost, a golden light dancing in his eyes and across his face.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “Can I kiss you again?”

Komaeda chuckles. “I thought you forgot about the other day, to be honest.” He kisses Hinata delicately, as if the sun itself had breathed life into his lips. His hands are warm when his hands trace Hinata’s cheeks, his hair soft when Hinata tangles his fingers in it.

It’s a sort of comfort, feeling him so alive. Hinata never wants to die again when he’s with him. Death no longer seems like such a comfortable thing to suffocate in.

 _I love you_ , Hinata thinks, but he’s still too afraid to admit it. He thinks he’ll have forever to say it.

He dreams again that night. It’s been a while since he’s been able to do that.

He thinks maybe this means everything will be fine again. That he can once again dream of beautiful memories and days spent in happiness.

The dream begins as if Hinata has just woken up in the morning. It’s light outside, but something feels wrong. Inexplicably, terribly wrong. His chest feels heavy.

He hauls himself out of bed. His legs feel heavy. His arms feel weak.

He wanders throughout his house, the floorboards creaking underneath his bare feet. Nothing is wrong, but it feels like it should be. Everything is in the same place as it was when he fell asleep – or has it moved, just a little bit? Has the world gone just a little bit off its axis, perhaps?

Hinata creeps to his door, every bone in his body shuddering.

When he opens the door, his heart leaves his body.

The door opens straight onto an empty highway. There’s a boy lying on the road. He’s got white hair and he’s wearing a brown sweater. _Komaeda_ , Hinata thinks, but he doesn’t want to say it. His mouth is flecked with blood. The red soaks through his hair and his sweater and pools onto the road.

Birds fly overhead, watching his shaky breathing. waiting for his racing heart to stop. His eyes are closed. They flicker still, just barely.

“Komaeda!” Hinata screams. There he goes, admitting it.

He runs out onto the road. He expects to hear cars, but there are none. The busy highway is completely empty. All the city lights around them are off.

It’s like they’re the only people in the world.

For a moment, Hinata is okay with that.

Komaeda’s eyes flick open. His voice is hoarse. He talks through ruined lungs. “Hinata…kun?”

He coughs. Blood comes out of his mouth, splattering Hinata’s face and dripping down to his shirt. Suddenly it hits Hinata that he’s holding a dying man.

Hinata’s skin starts to crawl. _Is this really the end? Is this my fault? Does this make it all my fault?_

Komaeda smiles. “Mm…sorry…”

His eyes close, and Hinata scoops him up and carries his body to the car parked by the side of the highway. It’s a nice car, and for some reason Hinata has the keys to it in his pocket. He puts Komaeda in the passenger’s seat and climbs over him to the driver’s.

He has no idea how to drive. He has no idea if his passenger is alive or dead.

To be honest, he has no idea about anything.

Komaeda’s eyes stay closed the whole time they’re driving. Hinata closes his own too. They wait to die, to be struck and killed, to die in the arms of a friend, but it never happens. There’s no one on the road to release them.

At some point Komaeda moves his hand to hold Hinata’s. His fingers are cold. The gesture reassures Hinata that the boy is still alive, but the brief relief, as usual, doesn’t last. Things like happiness never last with Komaeda.

There are people on the road again when they start to near the hospital. Hinata never actually planned to take Komaeda there, but he pulls in and gets out despite that. Komaeda tries to step out, shakily, but Hinata stops him, taking him by the arm.

The other boy is weak, so weak. Every step he takes blood drips onto the asphalt. Every movement he makes seems overwhelmingly painful. His body is so covered in scratches and bruises and burns that it begs the question, _how the fuck is he even alive_?

Hinata wonders that a lot throughout the arduous twenty five metre journey to the emergency room.

The nurse at the front counter stares him down when they make it in. Her face is odd. It seems to shift between various people…people Hinata knows. His classmates.

“Please,” Hinata gasps. It’s the only thing he can make out as he hands Komaeda over to a vaguely-doctor-like figure that, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t see properly.

The shadowed figure tries to grab Komaeda’s arm, to clean him up and assess him, but the boy just slaps their hand away. “Get the fuck off me!” he yells. His voice is still hoarse, weak and clearly painful. His eyes are pained, not just from his injuries, but something deeper.

“I’ll take him,” Hinata offers, almost on impulse. “I’ll clean things up.”

Somehow, he knows where the bathrooms are, and he takes Komaeda into one and shuts the door.

“It hurts,” Komaeda winces as Hinata peels his blood-soaked sweater off his sweat-slicked skin. He’s pale, even paler than normal, and he’s cold. “It hurts.”

His shirt is even more soaked. It’s as if it’s stuck to his skin. Komaeda whimpers as Hinata gently pries the fabric away from flesh. “It hurts,” he moans. “It hurts it hurts it hurts…”

There’s nothing Hinata can do to fix his pain. He knows this. He knows this and it absolutely shatters him.

“Sit down,” Hinata tells him. “I need to take your pants off.”

Komaeda laughs. “Pervert. I can do that myself.”

He sits on the edge of the bathtub, peeling the dark fabric away from the blood on his legs. Hinata runs a cold bath and takes some betadine from the cupboard above the sink.

“Get in,” he says once Komaeda is left only in a pair of black boxer shorts. He doesn’t make him take those off. He doesn’t want to make him.

“It hurts,” Komaeda whimpers, sliding one grazed foot in the cold water. He keeps wincing and whimpering, but he gets in and stretches out. The water quickly becomes red and brown, dirt and blood sliding off his skin.

Hinata can’t help but stare. Komaeda’s arms are thin, perhaps too thin, and covered in scars. His fingers seem weak and his hands tremble. His legs are long and slender, covered in bruises. His naked chest is bony and hollow. His ribs poke out from his skin like a stray dog’s.

There are grazes all along his body, from the road. His spine is bruised and bloody in the most horrible red shade Hinata’s ever seen. His knuckles are swollen and purple, his fingers shaking violently. There’s blood everywhere on him, even still after the water hits him initially.

He looks an inch away from death.

“Let me disinfect that,” Hinata says, gesturing to a wound on his shoulder. He pours some betadine onto a cotton ball and dabs it on the cut.

“It hurts,” Komaeda sobs. “It hurts…”

Hinata wakes up cold, the boy’s pitiful whimpering replaying in his head. It’s all he can hear. Guilt consumes him.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it,” he murmurs, sitting up in his bed and rubbing his eyes. “It’s my fucking fault, right?”

Before he can spiral any deeper, his phone beeps. A notification from Komaeda.

Even though Hinata knows he didn’t really get hurt last night, he breathes a heavy sigh of relief. _He’s okay._

They meet at the bridge again. Hinata brings a can of coffee from his fridge. He chugs it as he walks, just to calm his nerves a little bit. The caffeine distracts him at least, if nothing else.

“It’s almost winter,” he says to himself, noticing the cold and the trees beginning to lose their last few leaves around him. “I should’ve bought a jumper.”

Komaeda’s face is a relief when Hinata finally sees him. He wraps his arms tight around the other boy, burying his face in his fluffy hair as if to check it’s real. As if to check for the smell of blood.

"Are you okay?” Komaeda asks. “This isn’t really like you.”

Hinata wipes his eyes. He’d barely even realised it, but there were tears in his eyes. “I just…I had a bad dream.”

“What about?” Komaeda seems curious.

“You were…you were dying. I took you to the hospital.”

He nods. “Well, I’m not dead, am I?” He laughs, raising his arms as if to show off his mortal form.

“I know that,” Hinata mutters. “It’s just…the dreams all seem to leave some affect on reality. The oranges…the cigarettes…I was worried…”

“That I might be hurt?” Komaeda finishes for him. “I’m not. So don’t you worry your pretty little mind.”

 _Who the hell is he, to be talking to me like I’m some kind of eighteenth century maiden?_ Hinata grumbles to himself, but he finds himself blushing, just a little.

He notices a tiny speck of blood on Komaeda’s sleeve, but he doesn’t comment on it, at least not while they walk. He wants to keep believing the real world they live in is perfect. He wants to believe that the real Komaeda, that _his_ Komaeda, isn’t like the dream Komaeda.

“What’s that?” Hinata asks, as innocently as possible, as they walk through the school gates. He gestures to Komaeda’s arm, the small blood stains on his sleeves.

“Nothing,” Komaeda says, but his words are quick and his eyes won’t meet Hinata’s.

“If you don’t mind…” Hinata says slowly, “…Can I see? I need to know…if the dream was right.”

Komaeda sighs and steps into the closest school bathroom. “You’re really worried about these dreams, aren’t you?” he murmurs, twisting his fingers. “You can see if you want, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

Hands trembling, Hinata picks Komaeda’s sleeves up delicately, and rolls them over his bony wrists.

It’s like the dream.

Komaeda’s arms are covered in scars, to the point where Hinata thinks they’re not even _scars_ , they’re _mutilation._ His skin is twisted, each gorge in the flesh deforming the rest of it around, puckering it in and swelling it out. And there’s a piece of gauze stuck to the back of his left arm, where the blood is coming from.

“You did that?” Hinata whispers, grabbing the other boy’s shaky hands.

“The human mind can withhold a surprising amount of pain,” Komaeda murmurs. He doesn’t say anything else, just wordlessly rolls his sleeves back down.

The more Hinata stares at him, the more disturbed he gets. He realises the burns on his knuckles – _Cigarette burns maybe?_ he thinks – and the bruises. He realises the way one of his hands doesn’t quite move the same way, how sometimes his fingers don’t seem to move how he wants them to.

There’s no light in his eyes, now that Hinata looks more carefully. Now that Hinata sees him, sees him properly, he doesn’t seem so full of life anymore. He just looks dead, like a man who’s lived several lifetimes already.

He wonders just what happened to this boy, for his body to be this ruined and his eyes this lifeless.

“You’re just like the dream.”

_Dead._

“Yeah,” Komaeda smiles, somewhat tragically.

His smile seems like tragedy itself now.

And then nothing is ever normal again.

He dreams Komaeda is standing on a bridge, and the wind is blowing fast, and it’s raining. The water below is dark and full of turmoil. It reminds Hinata somewhat of his own heart.

Komaeda is crying. His eyes are desperate, like they’re searching for something – _anything_. His expression feels too real. Everything feels too real. Maybe this isn’t a dream.

“If I die…” Komaeda’s voice begins softly. It’s hoarse. Hinata has to strain to hear him over the wind.

“Will you love me more if I die?” Komaeda screams, his voice scratching in his lungs.

Hinata wants to scream back. He wants to hug Komaeda to his chest and tell him he loves him more alive. But of course, it’s just a dream isn’t it? He can’t scream in the dream. He can’t make himself.

He wakes in a world alone.


End file.
